Starmer Don’t Scrimp! Do The Tyne Bridge Properly.

News has recently broken that the final £6.2m to restore the iconic Tyne Bridge is under threat of spending cuts in PM Sir Keir Starmer’s forthcoming Spending Review.

Sensible Savings by Scrapping A1 Dualling

I think there will be very few people, when looking back to the 2024 General Election would say that virtually anything was going well in the UK at the time; widely recognised by the public who delivered the worst result for the Conservatives in their history as a party. A well deserved boot up the bottom perhaps for the mess the country was left in.

It was, therefore unsurprising that proclamations of a ‘£22bn black hole’ were quite plausible, and that anything and everything was to be reviewed and scrutinised.

Indeed, one major local project pretty much exemplifies the state of the shambles: the A1 north of Morpeth.

For clarity, I have long been opposed to dualling the A1 on environmental grounds, which is best summarised by Space4Gosforth, as well as the flawed economic and safety cases for dualling there not outweighing the negative environmental impact. This isn’t a popular viewpoint to say the least, but please read the above argument by Space4Gosforth, and see if it changes your mind.

I strongly feel that the long awaited development of the Northumberland Line was a far, far superior investment than dualling ever would be, and that my own thoughts on expansion of the rail network in Northumberland, with the Northumberland Coast Loop is the way forward for area, not road expansion.

Therefore, I am glad that dualling of the A1 has not progressed, and seems extremely unlikely to do so in the future either, BUT the caveat is that the investment needs to be made in other infrastructure to enable cleaner, greener transport, such as the Northumberland Coast Loop.

I believe that the plan to dual the A1 gives an important context to refurbishment of the Tyne Bridge despite them being radically different projects.

2014 – 2024: The Decade of Nowt

Going back a little over a decade and six Prime Ministers ago, to when David Cameron was in Downing Street as PM (followed by May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, and currently Starmer), the ‘promise’ to dual the A1 between Morpeth and Ellingham was made, with apparent funding of £290m being available.

Fast forward to 2024, whilst there were some works such as ground investigations and property purchases; which have been recently revealed to have cost £68.4m, not an inch of dual carriageway was actually built in the near decade between the ‘promise’ being made in December 2014, and the announcement of the June 2024 General Election.

In addition, the timing of the Development Consent Order finally coming on the 24th May 2024, just days before parliament was dissolved; was greeted, in my view quite rightly, as an obvious attempt at vote grabbing, which by all accounts failed spectacularly.

In many parts of the UK, Conservative MP’s recieved a well deserved flop at the ballot box, and lost their seats. The North East now has zero Conservative MP’s representing it, the region being 100% Labour represented.

After the 2024 General Election, and the appointment of Sir Keir Starmer to lead the Government as PM, the work of ‘fixing’ the UK was said to be underway, and an early sense of optimism for the future came with this, and with some quick victories in certain areas of policy.

On the 30th October 2024, the decision not to dual the A1 was announced, with it being branded as ‘unfunded and unaffordable’, somewhat backed up by the inaction of the preceding decade, and given a rudimentary calculation via the Bank of England Inflation Calculator, the £290m cost estimate of 2014 would be £391.7m by October 2024, this possibly not accounting for construction costs far exceeding the mainstream inflation rate which is calculated on a wider basket of goods.

Since then, the cost has been revealed to have risen to £500m+, and with independent campaigners against road expansion at Transport Action Network regarding the scheme to have a benefit to cost ratio of 0.8, meaning each £1 spent would only yield an 80p return, it is understandably a very poor way to invest half a billion pounds.

In a time of constrained government finances; the wasting of half a billion pounds on dualling the A1, which makes reaching Net Zero harder, makes traffic worse, and doesn’t viably improve safety by much, if at all, is a total waste of time, energy and money.

Starmer Starting to Scrimp?

However, in that context, £6.2m, while a massive sum of money to the ordinary person, is peanuts in comparison, being about 1.25% the cost of dualling the A1.

This is where I think that Starmer may be starting to be scrimping, rather than taking a sensible, logical approach to schemes like the Tyne Bridge.

That the long-neglected Tyne Bridge, as much an icon of the North East as the Forth Bridge is to Scotland, is finally being sorted out is great news, but that final sentence sets out the absurd notion that due to failure to pay a reasonably small remaining sum, that ‘the crossing may not be repaired to the quality expected.‘.

To not embark on a major scheme to build a largely new road like the A1, that has questionable value economically is one thing, but to try and cut the relatively tiny budget for long overdue maintenance on a iconic piece of British engineering, and one that is a deep cultural icon of the North East; a region that significantly helped put Sir Keir into office less than a year ago with a strong majority is a real betrayal; why should it celebrate its centenary over the Tyne in anything less than the best condition, ready for the next 100 years?

The Labour landslide in the North East shouldn’t be taken for granted; Blyth Valley, the seat next door to my childhood home was always considered a safe ‘red wall’ constituency until the 2019 win by Ian Levy of the Conservative Party.

If Starmer scrimps on the Tyne Bridge, meaning it isn’t done to the high standards it deserves, then next G.E. might see the red wall fall again. Please, just cough up the cash to do the Tyne Bridge properly, not just do ‘Bodge it Britain’ again.